ECONOMICS OF THE AGING
REVOLUTION

In March of 1999, a U.S. News and World Report cover story was
"The World Turns
Gray: How Global Aging Will Challenge the World's Economic Well-being".
As
fertility rates plummet internationally, the aging revolution will ironically occur much faster in
developing than in developed nations, compounding their problems in modernizing. Whereas,
for instance, it took 140 years for the proportion of France's aged population to double, it will
take 34 years in China and 22 years in Venezuela.

AGE DISCRIMINATION IN THE
WORKPLACE

There is a growing capitalist bias against older workers. Until the
1980s, the contract between workers and corporate America was that the
longer salaried employees worked for a company the more they were paid.
But with international competition, corporate downsizing (coupled with
the fact that "mature workers" are disproportionately represented in aging
industries), and how with rampant change lifetimes of experience decreasingly
lead to the accumulation of valued social knowledge, seniority
has increasingly been replaced with meritocracy. Younger, supposedly
better educated, workers are cheaper. They pose fewer problems of authority,
as younger managers can feel threatened by older and more experienced subordinates.
Further, a 1993 Supreme Court decision, involving a 62-year-old employee
who was discharged from Hazen Paper Company a few weeks before he qualified
for full pension benefits, held that employers could look at factors associated
with employee age--such as the length of service with the company--in deciding
whether or not to fire workers without violating the federal
Age Discrimination
in Employment Act of 1967.

As a result, the old have come to serve as a balance between the
supply and demand for labor in a highly differentiated, specialized, and
interdependent market system. Their employment opportunities in such a
system have become a function of the population age structure, with openings
varying indirectly with the rate of young persons reaching working age,
and a function of corporate intervention in the marketplace, whether through
law (i.e., the Older Americans Act) or war.

It is in this context that we receive varying images of the impacts
of older workers on the workplace. For example:

According to a 1988 survey of business executives sponsored by the
American Society for Personnel Administration and Commerce Clearing House
(Thomas Jerdee, principal investigator), older, "plateaued" workers
are causing moderate to severe problems for nearly one-half of the nation's
companies. Below are the percentages saying that plateauing was causing
a "moderate," "great," or "very great" problem
for their companies:

RETIREMENT

The processes of "modernization" have regularized the structural
unemployment of the older cohorts of workers. Corresponding with this development
has been the emergence of ideological justifications which have, in turn,
modified the very meaningfulness of old age as a status attribute. "Retirement"
is supposedly is the old age status that individuals earn in exchange for
their lifetimes of social contributions--a time for leisure, individualism,
and self- fulfillment. But there are other ways of perceiving this new
life-cycle stage wherein individuals are no longer expected to be social
contributors:

retirement as a cultural consolation for death (particularly given
modern societies' death denials), providing a buffer against the disruptions
caused by the deaths of social functionaries;

retirement eliminates the need to be forever educating the old and
expedites the "fresh contact" phenomenon, whereby new generations
approach old problems with new perspectives;

given the hierarchical authority structures in organizations, retirement
satisfies the structural need to promote the young so as to retain their
interests and to secure their commitment; further, younger managers can
feel threatened by older, more experienced subordinates;

for management, the high cost of reimbursing older workers for their
years of loyalty can be cut with the hiring of cheaper younger laborers,
also allowing for greater management fluidity;

for unions, retirement makes their seniority systems work.

Up through the early 1990s, the trend for men was increasingly early retirement.
According to a Census Bureau report, 19% of men older than 65 were in the workforce
in 2003, up from 16.4% in 1990 but significantly less than the 45.8% in 1950. But many--perhaps as many as one in five--"unretire"
within three years. See Leora Friedberg's "The Recent Trend Towards Later Retirement" (March 2007).

The new century found Americans financially ill-prepared for retirement, even though they believed otherwise.
The 2006 annual Retirement Confidence Survey,
"Will More of Us Work Forever?," conducted by the Employee Benefit Research Institute
found one-half of workers 55 and older have less than $50,000 saved.
Phantom benefits contribute to the illusion of retirement security. Of
those workers 55 and older, 44 percent believe that they will be eligible for
full Social Security benefits one to four years before they actually are.

For such labor data as the proportion of different age groups in the labor force, historic changes in the median age of
leaving the labor force and expected years of retirement see the Urban Institute's
Retirement Policy by the Numbers
(2007)

WHERE'S MY PENSION?

Corporate bankruptcies and takeovers have led to collapsed pension funds.
To remain competitive, some companies simply did not set aside enough money for
their plans. Others miscalculated when their people would retire,
expecting them to retire later than they did; others underestimated how long
their retirees would live. Bankrupt airlines, such as United in 2004,
simply said that they would no longer be contributing to its pension
plans--while seeking ways to get out of their pension obligations. Sensing
such breakdowns, many retire early to protect themselves against future pension
losses. Left with the IOUs is the federal government, the
Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation to be
precise.

In late 2004, Big Blue, IBM, announced that it would no longer offer future
employees a fixed pension, offering a 401(k) pension plan instead. As the
1980s will be remembered for its two-tier pay systems--such as the Postal
Service hiring new workers at 80% of the salaries of their predecessors in 1984
and, in 1985, United Air hiring new pilots at 70% of what they paid to their
predecessors--so the beginning of the new millennium, just before the first wave
of Boomer retirements, will be remembered for its two-tier pension
schemes. (Not to deny that the former continues. The 2004 settlement
of the strike by southern California grocery workers, for instance, featured the
concession by the United Food and Commercial
Workers for employers to pay the newly-hired a dollar less an hour than
current workers--while contributing only 35% for their pensions, versus the 100%
contribution for current employees.) The consequence: worker resentment,
older workers' fears of job loss, and demands for generational
equity.

PRODUCTS AND SERVICES FOR THE
OLD

Sociologists and gerontologists of work should consider the number
of careers and job opportunities created because of the aging revolution.
Consider what institutions have "gained" because of the "problem"
of old age: legal, medical, academic, all levels of government, social
scientists and social service providers, and architects. As the service
sector of the economy expands, commodifying all aspects of family life,
the older population is increasingly being appreciated as the next market
frontier. Consider this caricature: the contribution of the aging population
to the political economy derives from its employment of younger, working
class individuals to attend to their needs. Certainly a latent consequence
of such service sector interventions has been the reification of a new
life stage.

Ageless Design from NPR.
Interview with James Pirkl, Professor Emeritus of Industrial Design at Syracuse University
and author of Transgenerational Design: Products for an Aging
Population (RealAudio) .

Aging Solutions A comprehensive resource for family caregivers during all stages of care..

Brookland Intergenerational Daycare Center--(D.C.)
providing "opportunities for pre-school and school age children
and adults and seniors from diverse backgrounds to interact on a daily basis through informal and formal exchange."

Ricability research and information for
disabled and elderly consumers (UK)

GeronPo a government-funded research
project of the Design Sciences Research Center of the Department of Design Sciences at
Hogeschool Antwerpen that focuses on the links between age-related changes and product related
solutions

GEROTECHNOLOGIES

Given our cultural attraction to and faith in technological innovations, it was inevitable that
the last life stage would attract inventers and entrepreneurs. From Japan's
Sanyo Electric Company, for instance, comes a human washing machine. To
keep an eye on elderly parents, there's Mitsubushi's Wakamaru, a mobile speaking
robot with television camera eyes. From Carnegie Mellon comes the Hug, a
robotic pillow that allows grandparents to send squeezes and pats to their
grandchildren when similarly equipped with their own special pillow. In
addition, of course, are all of the new medical technologies, from electronic
medicine dispensers to insulin pumps.

An increasing number of firms are customizing products and services for the
"mature market." To sell, however,
geriatric connotations often must be downplayed (the failure of H.J. Heinze to
sell "Senior Foods" in 1955 comes to mind, as does Johnson &
Johnson's 1983 introduction of Affinity shampoo, "made for hair that time
has changed") and product lines made to appeal
to younger age-groups. Examples include easy-to-load
cameras, pump-style toothpaste dispensers, lever-operated faucets, and watches
with large numbers.